


In the pines

by emperro



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:49:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4327524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emperro/pseuds/emperro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenny says it's okay when you dream about someone who's gone, even after a lot of time passed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the pines

Clementine has these dreams pretty often — about Lee coming back.

Kenny says it's okay when you dream about someone who's gone, even after a lot of time passed. It hurts, but Kenny has experience with this, so Clem believes him.

She dreams about Lee finding her in the forest. Or about her finding him, to be more accurate. The sound of gunfire is pretty easy to hear and Clem hides, like a cat, in the buckthorn branches — so careful, so silent. And then... she can see _him_. Tired looking, in a dirty, blood stained shirt, ready to shoot again.

“— Lee!”  
“— Clem?...”

They run towards each other, cuddling and laughing like it always happens in the movies. Or not like that, maybe. Clem's memories about that are not too clear — she had no time for watching any movies in the last couple of years.

Next time Lee just comes: he knows that Clem and Kenny stayed at this exact hotel, and Clem knows for sure it's not a foe when she opens the door. Lee gives her apples that he brought specially for her, and tells how the amputation helped him to survive, and how unnecessary his other hand actually was. Versions of how he was saved are always different: once it was because of something called antibodies. Kinda unique ones or something. Clem doesn't know the way these things work but if Lee is alive due to them — it's more than okay.

Sometimes Lee just... appears, you know. There is nothing — and there he is, like it's not a big deal at all. He ruffles Clem's short hair and asks her to draw a dog for him, and Clem takes pencils gladly, the thing she didn't do for so long.

Lee always comes back in various ways, you never can say where you will meet him next time. Jumping out the darkness in the most critical moment and killing the walker that attacked Clem. Appearing in a new group Clem and Kenny have just met: Lee just got lucky, and now he has a beard. Or this: the apocalypse is gone, Clem comes back home and finds Lee there again. He talks about bourbon in her childish tea-set and then says he missed her so, so bad.

And sometimes, there is a dream within a dream. One where Clem deals with Carver or someone, and then suddenly wakes up as the eight year old little girl she once was, with Lee's arms around her. Lee promises he will never, never leave her; Clem believes him and then wakes up again, in the real world, and with tears on her cheeks. 

Kenny says dreaming about those who's gone is okay, but Clem starts to think something's wrong with her when, with every new dream, she wants to wake up less and less.

With every dream she has, Clem seems like she’s grown up and grows dark more and more. Her skin turns pale, childly rotund cheeks become sunken; it's only harder to pick up the pieces after every meeting with Lee, and Clem withdraws into herself.

When Lee really comes back, there's no one to meet him anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it, thanks for reading x
> 
> and of course thanks tardis-mouse.tumblr.com for editing :3


End file.
